Doctor Who Recap: Season 4, Episode 12, "The Stolen Earth"

“The Stolen Earth” is a wonderful and sometimes frustrating episode. Wonderful because it skillfully brings together not only all three of the series in the Russell T Davies Whoniverse, but also numerous other elements from his four seasons of Doctor Who. It also truly kicks off the big finish of Season Four and ends with a big ol’ insane cliffhanger. It’s maybe frustrating for all the same reasons, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a hell of a lot of fun.

The story begins immediately where “Turn Left” ended. The TARDIS materializes on Earth and the Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) are expecting disaster. But instead, all is perfectly calm; indeed, it’s a Saturday. Regardless, the Doctor remains unnerved by Donna’s meeting Rose, which indicates to him that if she can travel from one parallel world to another, then the walls of the universe are breaking down. (If only he’d seen her earlier in the season!) They head back to the TARDIS and no sooner do the doors close then strange things begin happening on the Earth. The TARDIS interior shakes and the Doctor runs to the door, swings it open and before you can say Han Solo, the planet’s gone. The TARDIS hovers in the empty space where the Earth once was.

The words “Far Across the Universe” scroll across the screen. In New York, a UNIT base is in disarray and Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) is present. A co-worker tells her to look at the sky. In Cardiff at Torchwood, a similar scenario has occurred and Captain Jack (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) assess the damage. Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) and Luke (Tommy Knight) are dealt the same hand in Ealing, as are Wilfred (Bernard Cribbens) and Sylvia (Jacqueline King) in Chiswick. The daylight is gone for planet Earth. It’s suddenly dark. Everyone stares up into the night seeing the same wondrous sight. Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) appears in the middle of a street, giant weapon in hand. She looks up and sees a night sky full of alien planets.

Rose: “Right, now we’re in trouble. And it’s only just beginning.”

The various groups of the Doctor’s friends scurry around each trying to do their thing to figure out what the hell is going on, and why there are 26 new planets in the sky (while on TV, Richard Dawkins has quite reasonably figured out that the planet’s moved). They realize there’s a massive space station in the middle of all the planets, and of course we the viewer are really the only people who can reasonably guess who’s onboard the ship, because we know the show and we know it’s the end of the season and we know who we’ve not heard a peep from since the early part of Season Three. Unidentified spacecrafts fly towards Earth. The first person to hear the grating alien voice is Sarah Jane Smith, thanks to her supercomputer, Mr. Smith: Daleks! (Of course.) Fear spreads across her face as it does Jack’s and Martha’s. Even though they’re all apart, they all feel the same kind of “We’re fucked” sensation. They descend on the planet and begin their reign of terror and the entire scenario is reminiscent of some great fifties alien invasion flick that was never made. It’s all really glorious and exciting and even if you’ve found yourself sick of Daleks over the past few years, this has the feel of “the moment it’s all been leading up to.”

Back in the TARDIS, on the other side of the universe, the Doctor, unable to find Earth anywhere, decides to go to the Shadow Proclamation (first mentioned way back in “Rose”), a sort of galactic police force run by albino women who use the Judoon as their muscle. They exist on some kind of space station of their own that’s another bit of gorgeous CGI, all steeples and turrets perhaps built onto the remnants of some long dead moon (the inside, however, looks a lot like what I’d suspect an empty office building in Cardiff to look like). When the Doctor tells the lead albino that the Earth’s missing, she becomes snotty and tells that actually 24 planets are missing (including Clom; the Doctor amusingly wonders, “Who’d want Clom?”). Donna also suggests the missing planets Pyrovillia and Adipose III (from “The Fires of Pompeii” and “Partners in Crime” respectively), and then there’s the Lost Moon of Poosh (mentioned in “Midnight”) and the Doctor realizes that some of the planets have been removed from time as well as space. He also deduces that they all fit together in a new formation to create a massive engine of some sort. But who could do this? He says that someone tried to move the Earth before, but that was a long time ago. (This actually happened in Earth’s future in “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” but as far as the show’s concerned it was a long time ago; that story was made in 1964.)

On Earth, the secret Project Indigo is being activated, and Martha’s going to give it a test run. Turns out it’s a teleport technology developed from leftover Sontaran gadgetry. Just before she jumps, her superior gives her something called the Osterhagen Key, which certainly sounds ominous because it’s got a European name. On the Crucible (the name of the Dalek ship), much scheming is going on between the Supreme Dalek and another mysterious figure who any old school fan will immediately recognize as Davros, the Dalek creator. There’s a third Dalek of great importance that turns out to be none other than Caan, last seen initiating emergency temporal shift in Season Three. He’s gone batshit crazy and his upper casing’s been melted away so that the tentacled creature inside is exposed. Davros credits him as being the savior of them all, while the Supreme Dalek calls him “the abomination.”

Caan: “He is coming. The three-fold man. He dances in the lonely places. Oh creator of us all, the Doctor is coming!”

Meanwhile the sound of a beating heart seems to be reaching out to Donna from somewhere. One of the albinos sees that something was on Donna’s back and tells her she’s sorry for her loss. Thinking she means the loss of Earth, the woman corrects her: “I mean the loss that is yet to come.” The Doctor interrupts and asks Donna if she can remember any important happenings on Earth from before her travels with him. She suggest the missing bees, which he quickly hooks into. Turns out the bees (or at least some of them) were actually aliens who went back home to their home planet sensing danger (clearly an homage to Hitchhikers Guide’s dolphins). The Doctor follows their trail to the oft-mentioned Medusa Cascade, and yet there is nothing there. Again, another gorgeous shot of the TARDIS drifting through the cascade—there’s no end to the frequent beauty of this episode. He’s helpless and says it’s the end of the line. There’s nothing more he can do, despite Donna’s protests that they can’t give up.

Everywhere on Earth the Daleks have taken over. The planet has surrendered. In the midst of it all a lone voice cries out to the Doctor’s many companions. It is Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton), former Prime Minister (you know who she is). She has constructed something called a “sub-wave network,” which is designed to seek out anyone and everyone who can help to contact the Doctor, and she contacts Torchwood, Sarah Jane, and Martha, while Rose is left as an observer since she’s hooked up with Wilf and Sylvia who don’t have a webcam. This entire sequence is actually quite charming, what with hope coming back to life and all, and it provides some much needed humor in the midst of all the seriousness. Then basically what happens is they all work together to place a super-turbocharged phone call to the Doctor. And it works, but at a price—Harriet’s life. The Doctor is able to locate Earth, as well as the other 26 planets, which have been shifted and exist in a tiny pocket of time out of sync with the rest of universe. He communicates with all his old friends through the sub-wave network—all but Rose, who still cannot be heard or seen. In the midst of the reunions, Davros (Julian Bleach) breaks through to the Doctor.

Davros: “Your voice is different, and yet its arrogance is unchanged. Welcome to my new empire, Doctor.”

Davros reveals that it was Dalek Caan’s emergency temporal shift took him back into the time-locked time war and he saved Davros’ life, although it cost him his mind. Davros pulls back his smock to reveal a chest that’s been ripped apart through surgery. He literally gave his cells to create a new race of Daleks. The Doctor pulls a lever on the TARDIS console and materializes on Earth. On cue, Rose is waiting for him outside the TARDIS, and he runs toward her and she to him and it’s all sweetly romantic—right up until a Dalek appears out of nowhere and issues a bolt to his side. And then it looks like Sarah Jane is going to be exterminated. As are Gwen and Ianto at Torchwood. And then, just to top it all off, the Doctor begins to regenerate…

Sheesh! This is exactly the kind of episode that is a joy to watch but a bitch to recap. Events just happen with this, bam, bam, bam rapid fire sense of urgency and surely this entire piece was not as much fun to read as it was to watch the episode itself. The characters are what make this thing work, and of course the dozen or so that are utilized in this piece have been so well-defined over the past four years that there’s almost no way Davies could screw it up. On paper, you’d never think it could work, and yet it does. The science is as dodgy as you’d expect, but when TV’s this much fun, who really cares about the technobabble. Usually for me there’s a point where a I just start laughing along with all the bad science because I don’t think even Davies assumes we’re going to take it all that seriously. It’s all an excuse to put every single toy from the collection into one big sandbox and just see what happens. And what happens is exhilarating TV, although there’s every reason it should sink before it should sail. Thank goodness it doesn’t.

NEXT WEEK: Find out all about the Osterhagan Key in the 90-minute season finale, “Journey’s End.” (Make sure to set your TIVOs and DVRs accordingly!)

Classic Who DVD Recommendation of the Week: Take a gander at “Destiny of the Daleks.” Not the greatest Dalek entry ever, but it’s got Davros, and you gotta love the Movellans. Starring Tom Baker and Mrs. Richard Dawkins (and ex-Mrs. Tom Baker), Lalla Ward.

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[...] but given 2009';s series of specials, this is actually the first standard-length installment since "The Stolen Earth" nearly two years ago. With it following on closely from the previous episode, and the next one [...]Posted by Doctor Who: Season 5, Episode 2, "The Beast B on 2010-07-07 18:29:05

Ross -

Frankly I have my doubts about the Slitheen making anything better, though to be fair they did work much better in The Sarah Jane Adventures than they did in Doctor Who. And you're right that Slitheen is a family name (the ones in SJA were explicitly members of the same family, out to avenge the ones killed in Who). We don't have any name for their actual species apart from the plain and simple "Raxacoricofallapatorians"... :-)Posted by Steven Cooper on 2008-08-01 14:30:00

The Shadow Proclamation disappointment was mainly down to budget constraints. The initial idea was to have basically every Who creature in there (including the Slitheen), but there just wasn't the time or money to do it justice. A shame. But not a big issue, really. Might have been nice to have seen the albino women in a previous DW story, though.Posted by Dan on 2008-08-01 12:30:00

Steven -

Based on your insight and verbiage, it's a huge shame you aren't writing the finale recap. Instead, everyone will have to suffer through my ramblings. ;-)

Yup - the Shadow Proclamation was something of a letdown, wasn't it? Surely the Slitheen would've made it better. Although technically, they would have been called something else, right? "Slitheen" was a family name as I recall. I still haven't seen the SJA eps with them. Does that rectify the situation?

Harriet Jones - R.I.P.Posted by Ross Ruediger on 2008-08-01 10:43:00

Ross -

I'm not surprised you found this a difficult episode to recap. Unlike the previous three season finale two-parters, which each take a sharp turn at the cliffhangers, this one is basically just one big story that happens to be shown in two pieces.

Also, although the beginning and the end of "The Stolen Earth" are brilliant, some of the stuff in the middle is frankly mediocre. The whole section with the Shadow Proclamation was deeply unimpressive, without the slightest sense of wonder which the long-awaited reveal of this mysterious entity should have created. (Apart from the outside of their base, which as you mentioned was gorgeous--the inside, however, looked like a public washroom. Shades of the tacky airport-lounge Gallifrey from the 1980s...)

You're right about the fun element, though. Having assembled a huge pile of plot coupons over four years' worth of stories, RTD proceeds to spend them at a furious rate. That's where the pace comes from--none of the plot elements are given any kind of introduction or explanantion for those who came in late. Harriet Jones, for example, is just there, blithely taking a major part in the story as if she hadn't been last seen nearly three years ago (and hardly mentioned since then). It's not an approach that could be used regularly, but for a special occasion like this RTD can take advantage of Doctor Who's stratospherically high public profile in the UK at the moment, and bring everyone along for the ride.

You make a good point about the helplessness the numerous companions feel right off the bat. Of course that's there just to reinforce the awesome might of the Daleks, as well as the absence of the Doctor. I do think one thing that's easy to overlook in this episode is that the Doctor's just not there. We as viewers keep coming back to him and we know he'll get there eventually. But to everyone else he's absent, and in all fairness to the characters, there's only one person who's good at kicking Dalek ass.

(Well, two if you're geeky enough to count Abslom Daak.)Posted by Ross Ruediger on 2008-07-31 23:40:00

I saw this right after the Brits did via the magic of the internet. Then I frantically scoured the internet for articles on David Tennant to see if he was leaving the show. Then I went to reviews and read all these British fan blog reviews and there was some interesting theories about what happens next. Some were pretty close, but there were some really interesting ones, too.

All in all, a great episode even if it's just the set up to denouement.

I will have more to say next week, but my one complaint about this story is the Doctor and his people seem to give up too easily. They are usually more brave in the face of impossible odds. Contrast the way they act here to the two parter a few seasons back where Cybermen and Daleks both try to take over the Earth at the same time. The Doc and company were a lot more plucky.

Anyway, Scifi sure is an annoying channel. I am glad they exist. I just wish it were run by people with a freaking clue.Posted by James Hudnall on 2008-07-30 14:35:00

Ross, yes it's a tricky episode to review if you've seen part 2, but I'm not sure a massive recap is the way around that. This seems to be the norm for Torchwood reviews, too. I wouldn't mind so much if the recap branches off into a review/analysis as it went along, but it's basically a blow-by-blow account of what most people already know (and everyone else would do well to avoid reading). I'd just like to see a balance between the two. But, if you prefer and enjoy that amount of writing, that's fine. It's easy enough to skip the recap. Just ensure there's a similarly meaty review/analysis at the end :)Posted by Dan on 2008-07-29 11:34:00

The Sci Fi promo was so ignorant and stupid and crushing that you have to be afraid that the people who ran it can vote, and drive cars, and raise children . . .

Small point: I hope the names of the 26 planets spell out something important.Posted by M.A.Peel on 2008-07-29 05:45:00

The Scifi channel showed a preview that let you know too much, which is all I can say without saying what they showed. The BBC didn't show any trailer for the next week when they aired it.Posted by Anonymous on 2008-07-29 01:57:00

First off - spoiler warning applied the last two weeks is still in effect. I just forgot to put it on the top of the piece.

Dan -

I feel your frustration, and I admitted as much at the final paragraph. The problem with an episode like this is that it's tough to write up a decent opinion piece without having seen the finale - except that I have seen the finale, but I always try to write my reviews as if I've not seen what comes after. In this case, it's almost impossible to have much to say about "The Stolen Earth" without "seeing" the finale. Like most of the DW season finales, the last two eps here really work as one big movie, and I wouldn't review a half a movie, now would I?

In any case, I appreciate that you want to hear my opinion on these matters. I'll be talking about "The Great DW UK Frenzy of '08" at the top of next week's piece. I don't know what was shown as a teaser for next week on Sci Fi, but I'm sure they gave far too much away, because they often do.Posted by Ross Ruediger on 2008-07-28 16:37:00

I hate people telling me what to do, so feel free to ignore this: but do we really need a review that's 95% recap? I just don't see the point in that "style" of reviewing. I'd rather hear what you THOUGHT of various aspects of the show. I read the first paragraph then scanned through 'till the last paragraph? So, was the cliffhanger spoiled for you, seeing as it aired in the UK ages ago? I heard the Sci-Fi Channel showed a trailer for next week's episode that RUINED the cliffhanger, too. A shame. Here in the UK this episode sent fans into a real frenzy, fuelled by forum and newspaper speculations.Posted by Dan on 2008-07-28 14:17:00